From radio networks to enterprise operations

Telecommunications

I began in 2008 as a radio frequency engineer at Ericsson. My first two years in the industry were spent on radio and network engineering in Pakistan and Bahrain, on network launch, optimisation and expansion.

Radio networks are measured constantly, and a network that looks sound on paper is tested against what is happening in the field. Trusting measurement over assumption was a habit I picked up there, and it has stayed with me through every role since.

Enterprise technology

In 2010 I joined Sybase Middle East as a technical team leader, working on enterprise mobility: taking business processes, SAP processes among them, out of the back office and into the hands of field teams. I stayed for five years. Around 2012 I also began writing about enterprise mobility.

In 2015 I moved to ITQAN as a business consultant on the technical and presales side, covering enterprise applications, mobility and portals. Technical proposals, RFP responses and proofs of concept meant explaining to a business what a technology would change for it, and then seeing the work through into delivery. Each of these roles took me a step further from the network and closer to how an organisation actually uses technology.

Project and portfolio leadership

Project management came next, in 2019, as Application Project Manager at Digital Okta, part of Yas Holding. By then most of my work was already about getting technology delivered inside organisations, and the technical background meant I could follow a project into its detail. The role covered cloud migrations and enterprise application implementations, and included establishing the company's PMO, with processes aligned to PMI practice.

In 2021 I moved to Yas Holding as PMO Manager and set up the IT PMO function for the group. I wrote the policies that governed it: PMO, demand management, portfolio management and IT change management. The group had businesses in very different sectors, so the aim was a shared way of running projects that each business could work with, and one reliable view of the portfolio for executives. That work continued at Yas Holding Technology from 2024.

Enterprise operations

The reporting I built along the way had already reached past projects, into service delivery, procurement, finance, HR and IT service management. In August 2025 that widened into a formal remit, and I became PMO Director and Operations Director together.

Operations now covers procurement, logistics, human resources, legal coordination and IT shared services, alongside the PMO, across several subsidiaries. The work is operational governance, efficiency and shared services, with executive-level coordination between them, and helping each subsidiary adopt digital tools and practices that suit how it actually works.

Technology has been the constant in all of this, from radio networks through enterprise mobility and applications to cloud, automation and now AI. My interest in AI comes from the same place as the rest of the work: how an organisation stays in control of the systems it depends on.

When AI begins to take part in decisions, the questions I know from PMO and operations come back in a new form. Who remains accountable for the outcome? What evidence sits behind an AI-generated recommendation? Where does a person need to review it before anything moves?

I have published two papers, both in 2024, on AI in project management, covering scheduling, risk prediction and resource allocation. I am now studying for a doctorate at Golden Gate University. I think of myself as a practitioner first. Research is a way of examining problems that emerge in the work more rigorously, and what it produces is meant to go back into it.

More on my research

I stay involved in community life in the UAE. I am a Core Admin Team Member of Pakistanis in Dubai and of Pakistanis in Al Ain, and a member of the Board of Trustees at the Pakistani Islamic Private School in Al Ain.

More on my community work